As we know from healthcare discussions, many (especially on the Democratic side of the aisle) are enamored with European approaches to social solutions. As such, I thought this video to be quite relative to the topic at hand:
Since the No Child Left Behind Act came along in 2001, New Mexico has been sending the federal government graduation rates based on the percent of seniors who earn a diploma by the end of the year.
By ignoring the thousands of students who drop out between grades nine and 11, the state has managed to post respectable graduation rates— a percentage in the mid-80s.
New Mexico had the U.S. Education Department's full consent, but the federal government was keeping its own books, based on the number of freshmen who graduate in four years. Those calculations were coming up with graduation rates for the state in the mid-60s.
New Mexico was doing nothing unusual but, according to a March 20 article in The New York Times, it has had one of the widest gaps between state and federal figures. Only Mississippi's was wider.
Garcia expects that to change. Starting this summer, the state will start reporting graduation rates based on entering freshmen.
By using seniors, Garcia said, the state was giving itself "a false sense of accomplishment."
When I was in sixth grade at Charles W. Lewis Middle School in New Jersey, my English teacher gave the class an assignment for all of us to write a letter to the editor of the Courier Post. My letter was about the poor quality of the food served in the school cafeteria.
Unfortunately, my letter never made it to the newspaper.
It did, however, earn me a trip to the principal's office. The principal, like the teacher before him, tried to reason with me to reconsider sending such a negative letter to the press and asked that I write a more appropriate letter for publication. I didn't agree to write another letter, but I did finally agree not to submit my original letter based on the the principal's promise to work to remedy the food situation in the cafeteria.
The situation did not improve and before long we middle schoolers rebelled and refused to buy the school lunch. I don't remember how, but after a few days, the press got word of the situation, and we actually had TV crews show up to cover the story. I've always regretted allowing myself to be talked out of sending that letter.
Ok, why this trip down memory lane? Well...
It seems the students at Readington Middle School (RMS) in Hunterdon County aren’t happy with the short amount of time they get for lunch every day. So in the finest American tradition - think “Boston Tea Party” - some of them came up with a novel way to protest the perceived injustice.
“Some 29 seventh- and eighth-graders at the school banded together during last Thursday’s 30-minute lunch period and paid for their $2 lunches with pennies,” reports the New Jersey Star-Ledger this morning. “That amounted to 5,800 individual, or 32 pounds, of pennies.”
Over 5,000 pennies weighing in at 32 pounds? God bless those kids! Just when you think the American revolutionary spirit of resistance is dead and gone, along they come to renew our hopes. Now for the rest of the story…
In a response worthy of King George himself, school administrators - that would be PUBLIC school administrators - “called using the coins a sign of disrespect to cafeteria personnel and fellow students, and punished the ‘Readington 29’ with two days of detention.”
Thanks to Chuck Muth for the trip down memory lane. It's bizarre that almost thirty years later NJ public school administrators are still trying to squash students' freedom of speech. Not to mention the fact that the school food situation is still not much better:
Seventeen percent of the Albuquerque Public Schools freshmen who took a test to measure workplace skills fell into the "unemployable" category in reading and math.
However, as alarming as that may be, it is really this statement that of the most concern:
WorkKeys, she said, helps give them an idea so they can plan accordingly.
Mary Ann Landry, the district's vocational education director, said APS scores rose slightly when some of the schools retested students as upperclassmen. However, the district did not provide complete data on those results.
Whoa! After a couple of more years of an APS education, the scores only "rose slightly." That's not good. And, what's with not providing complete data. If we want to continue to successfully draw businesses to New Mexico, this is a situation that has to be dealt with immediately, and the school district needs to be more forthcoming with data results.
Sorry, I've been pretty sporadic about posting lately. There is so much going on in the political arena with all of the open (and opening) seats for Congress, and yet, there really isn't anything happening. Names are still be floated. People are still trying to figure out what to do. And, the reality is that if folks don't make a decision soon, no one is going to care until after the holiday season.
So, instead of writing about politics I thought I'd throw my two cents in about this little charter school article (subscription) that appeared in the Journal on Sunday:
[New Mexico Coalition of Charter Schools Lisa] Grover wants to challenge the 1999 law limiting the number of charters to 75 start-ups in a five-year period. The state now has 65, averaging almost 10 a year since 2000.
"It's one of the most insidious caps," she said.
Also, charters are not allowed to expand beyond a maximum enrollment set at their initial application.
"If a school is proving itself," Grover said, "why should that school have to wait until renewal time to open up its classrooms to more kids?"
There are 3,500 students on waiting lists for these schools, she said, indicating "we need to grow."
If people want to send their kids to charter schools, they should be able to do so. The maximum enrollment cap is ridiculous and should be eliminated by the legislature.
Sorry, I've been pretty sporadic about posting lately. There is so much going on in the political arena with all of the open (and opening) seats for Congress, and yet, there really isn't anything happening. Names are still be floated. People are still trying to figure out what to do. And, the reality is that if folks don't make a decision soon, no one is going to care until after the holiday season.
So, instead of writing about politics I thought I'd throw my two cents in about this little charter school article (subscription) that appeared in the Journal on Sunday:
[New Mexico Coalition of Charter Schools Lisa] Grover wants to challenge the 1999 law limiting the number of charters to 75 start-ups in a five-year period. The state now has 65, averaging almost 10 a year since 2000.
"It's one of the most insidious caps," she said.
Also, charters are not allowed to expand beyond a maximum enrollment set at their initial application.
"If a school is proving itself," Grover said, "why should that school have to wait until renewal time to open up its classrooms to more kids?"
There are 3,500 students on waiting lists for these schools, she said, indicating "we need to grow."
If people want to send their kids to charter schools, they should be able to do so. The maximum enrollment cap is ridiculous and should be eliminated by the legislature.
Governor Richardson's plan to give all teachers a seven percent raise just doesn't make any sense. Some of those teachers deserve MUCH MORE than a seven percent raise, and some of those teachers don't deserve any raise at all, and a few of those teachers don't even deserve their job. If you don't believe me, read this:
As I was saying, given these past [testing] experiences, the "Instructional Council" at my school had a great idea. So great, I separate the idea into its own paragraph....
Send the kids home and have our Spring Parent/Teacher conferences in the afternoons of three testing days.
This idea kills so many birds with so few stones that worldwide bird populations would be decimated and we could still build a sturdy stone gymnasium. Kids test at the optimal time, "studies" show, are sent home during the useless afternoons, Parent/Teacher conferences don't wreck other school days, conferences don't last all day leading to teacher coma and basically having to put name tags on the parents to tell them apart. This is possibly the greatest single idea ever developed through a school leadership committee, imho, and I'm considering nominating this idea and "council" to the people at Nobel, Fulbright, etc. for an award of some type.
And that's where we finally reach the point of this little story. Several teachers (total number unknown) didn't like the plan. They didn't like it because it involved we teachers extending our work day from the normal 3:05 final bell (and roughly 3:20/3:30 hitting the parking lot) until 4:00 in order that parents would have more time to see us.
They framed the objection as being made without sufficient staff input, but in truth they really just didn't like having to stay until 4:00. I cannot stress how embarrassing it is for me, as a K-12 teacher, to have typed the previous sentence.
I was born a New Yorker and have lived in more places than I can count on one hand. My wanderings included a total of more than two years in Ecuador and nine years in California. The latter being significant as that is where I met the love of my life. Of course, she determined that our progeny would be the tenth generation of her family to be raised in New Mexico. So, this is where my roots will grow long.
